Messengers to Pee Dee Baptist Association’s annual meeting on Oct. 18 voted to dismiss from its membership the Eastside Baptist Church in McColl, which two years ago called a woman as pastor.
The recommendation for dismissal came from the association’s executive committee, which unanimously approved the measure at its July 19 meeting. The document declared the association’s “desire to remain faithful to biblical teaching” in agreement with the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message Statement of the Southern Baptist Convention, which in article 6 limits the role of senior pastor to men. The association decided two years ago not to accept any funds from Eastside in the wake of its call of Bell.
Dorothy Bell of Hamlet, N.C., came out of retirement to accept the pastorate at Eastside, which is her home church. She and her husband, Harold Bell, helped start Temple Baptist Church in Columbia. She also has had affiliation with both mission boards of the SBC, serving in Germany and Panama.
In a letter to the congregation on Oct. 6, after passage of the executive committee’s resolution calling for Eastside’s dismissal, the church’s deacon chairman, David Duffy Sr., referred to the “overwhelming calling from God to call Reverend Bell for the uplifting of this church, in order to allow us to better serve our risen Savior and spread the gospel to McColl and the world.”
Eastside had been a member of Pee Dee Association for more than 100 years.